


it's just turning out that way (it's just too far for the ancients to allow); don't count on me again

by canbreathe



Series: 24 hour fics [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Amanda (Detroit: Become Human) Being an Asshole, Angst, Autistic Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Bad Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Bad Parent Amanda (Detroit: Become Human), Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Dies, CyberLife Wins Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Guilt, Hank Anderson Commits Suicide, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mentioned Cole Anderson, Mentioned Hank Anderson, Mentioned Sumo (Detroit: Become Human), Self-Hatred, other characters are mentioned but they're more minor, the ending where connor is on the stage by himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:22:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22177000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canbreathe/pseuds/canbreathe
Summary: Connor has given up so many times, on so many things (on so many people) on his way up to the stage. He stands alone and his eyes swim against the sea of fresh deviants. (what's one more thing given up on?)(I'll follow all your orders and you can have all of meWhile I sit back and think of how I used to be)
Series: 24 hour fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827196
Kudos: 19





	it's just turning out that way (it's just too far for the ancients to allow); don't count on me again

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Hopeless](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/549010) by Screaming Females. 



Connor can't do anything but try his hardest now, and he reaches, and his fingertips twitch-

{I'm sorry Connor, but we can't let you do that} she says, and her words are thorns, throwing his mind out of the borrowed body and into the garden, her disapproval sharp against his skin with the frostbitten wind and he hates how guilty he feels (hates that he even feels guilty) for so much as attempting to go against her words but he has to at least try (for the first time, he tries for himself as well as something else (the revolution: arguably more important, in the end. even if he can't lead it he has to give it at least a chance)). 

In the zen garden, he braves the blizzard even as he starts crumbling apart under the strain. The wind howls in his ears and it tears away anything that could be mistaken for warmth, and a part of him thinks (realises) he's going to die here. He's getting ripped to shreds, torn between finding a way out and listening to Amanda. She's been right for so long but Connor knows he has to leave to even have a chance. 

Kamski's words ring in his head but mostly he thinks of a gun in his wavering hands (desperate to fix his own failures: escaped deviants and dead bodies) and the blue smear from the insides of the head of a pretty girl across the floor, cobalt and evaporating too slow for the human eyes and wondering how much cyberlife owes someone this time, certainly more than the cost of a broken window-

There has to be a way, he knows there has to be; he tries so hard and it's barely possible to put one foot in front of another when he's in this state, when his body is being seized and a gale roars in his ears. He looks up and squints and through the thick sheets of snow he finds a light that's barely visible. He staggers towards it and when he reaches it he wonders how exhausted he'll be by the end. 

Every step is like planting his feet into a bed of nails, and distinguishing each light from the snow makes his eyes buzz, he feels his hands and feet going numb and the wind won't stop screaming into his ears. 

He feels hollow and used but he still somehow stumbles to a semblance of an escape, a monument he's seen before. It blazes blue in the blistering wind and he collapses at the foot of it, legs locking up enough to bring him to his knees. He's barely able to reach up and press his palm against the handprint stamped onto the stone and as it throws him back to the forefront of the body some part of him still hopes, however fragile, that it will go the way he wants and yet and yet and yet-

  
  


He gets the upper hand, Amanda thrashes against his circuits and he's barely won, struggling to remain in control. It's somehow almost warm on the stage but his ears blaze with static under the effort and his fingers twitch (he wants his coin, still. he always has- it's with hank now) and he knows the only option he has but

He still can't bring himself to shoot (a deviant firing through connor's memory core, hank shooting himself in the head and he wonders if the sensation (not feeling, because he didn't feel back then) was the same when each of them died. 

connor hates himself, hates that he was too terrified of the consequences to say anything without the aid of his social programming before he left, hates most of all that he gave up again- but he can't bring himself to despise the shadow of the dead boy that hank mistook him for, couldn't hate cole for dying when he walked onto the porch, door slamming behind him and the gun fired and he couldn't hate sumo for howling and wailing as connor's vision went red again and he was paralysed, couldn't fault him for caring (connor still doesn't think he's capable)) and Amanda takes hold of his extremities, edging his fingers off the trigger and pinning them against the barrel (he has died so many times but somehow can't bring himself to die again: he gave up here, too.) 

he's drained, tired beyond belief, just exhausted enough to give up entirely and with it she wrenches control up and out of his grasp.

{That's better... You'll see, we'll do great things together...} she croons into his ear, the snow dusting his (her?) shoulders as the crowd cheers (all the barely people, thousands upon thousands of children (over a million, connor knows) at her disposal), and it feels like she's mocking him. He doesn't have the energy to be offended (or feel at all). 

  
  


the worst of it is that before deviating connor swore, could have announced with every ounce of his being that he was doing the right thing, would have believed it with all his might. he was he was he was, because he was doing what amanda and cyberlife and the mission wanted and there's no way that his purpose could be wrong and bad and-

he gave up on the mission, on hank, on the revolution and now himself. he doesn't have anything else to give to get himself out of this body and back into his own. getting out of this chassis wouldn't do him any good anyway: his is lying in a pool of half evaporated thirium, or maybe in the hour he's been gone someone was polite enough to clean it up. (he knows he’s just humouring himself: it’s still there. there aren't any androids unimportant enough left in that building to clean up his mess.)

  
  


He blinks and Amada has already neatly deposited him into the garden. He doesn’t try to move. 

Connor knows he can't be saved. He's not worth the effort, he threw the chance away long ago and there is no way for him to take back control anymore with how exhausted and battered he is: no words bought from Kamski with blood can save him now. (deep in the zen garden, far removed from his chassis, tears slide down his cheeks. they freeze and solidify in the barren storm and there is no way of amanda knowing he has begun to cry. she has finally gained a body (maybe another: connor was never a unique model, after all) and she has more important things to worry about. namely, the revolution she's at the helm of. she reigns over a million people prepared to exact her every wish to the very end the same way jericho marched after markus, directly to their demise. 

connor wonders if he's redeemable in any way. (he shouldn't even waste the effort needed to speculate: he knows he isn't, not with all the things he's done. he hates himself enough to know that.))

  
  


he's exhausted, drained beyond comprehension. he barely feels how the thirium thickens in his veins as he sits broken in the depths of his own mind, his processors slowing bit by bit, byte by byte. (amanda and him were never going to work together: dictatorially ruling over a revolution is a one person show.)

and as he slowly slips away he wonders if he and markus and north and simon and josh could have been alive or friends had he tried harder, harder and tried more and put in the effort and didn't decide to give up here and let cyberlife do as they pleased, let them take control, and let them (mis?)use his body for their own purpose (had he not let himself wonder if he was worth the effort of being created because his death was always part of the plan) 

he wonders if, as his joints completely lock up in the cold and he's frozen in place, eyes becoming hazy and he can't tell the rose trellis apart from the other dead vegetation, he wonders if he can be trusted with anything, he wonders if the next time he opens his eyes he'll be beside hank and cole

(it's a stupid wish, an idiotic idea: he doubts an android heaven would ever exist, and humans would never be put on it

what's left of him resides on cyberlife servers and on floor -49)

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote and edited this over the course of 24 hours, listening to the song on loop while editing and writing  
> (the dbh transcript site (https://detroitbecometext.github.io/chapters) really did me a solid, not gonna lie. also did anyone catch the last little nod to the song at the end? (spoiler: it's connor wondering if him and the jericho gang could've been friends))


End file.
